High Court Provides Relief To OBC, SC & EWS Primary School Teachers

Bhopal (Madhya Pradesh): Madhya Pradesh principal bench of High Court in Jabalpur instructed the Directorate of Public Instructions (DPI) and the Principal Secretary ( school education ) to ensure the posting of OBC, SC, and EWS primary school teachers (or Grade-III) in schools under the School education department within 30 days as per their choice.

In 2020-23, many reserved category candidates , who were treated as unreserved category, were given posting in tribal welfare department schools though they had not filled their choice for it.

The division bench of Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Sharaf has passed the order while hearing the petition of the aggrieved teachers. In the Primary Teacher Recruitment 2020-23, many reserved category candidates were shifted to unreserved category based on their merit and were posted in schools run by tribal welfare department, even as they had not mentioned any school of the department in their choice.

These primary teachers had filed a petition against this move in 2023.

Advocate Rameshwar Singh Thakur, who appeared on behalf of petitioners, argued that the DPI had arbitrarily posted the petitioners, sidelining the reservation rules and Supreme Court guidelines. The candidates with lower marks than the petitioners were posted in schools run by school education department as per their choice, while the petitioners were sent to schools under Tribal Welfare Department by changing their reserved category to unreserved as they had secured higher ranks on the merit list. They had not mentioned a single Tribal Welfare school in their choices.